6 Profitable Passive Income Ideas For Lawyers

Although legal practice is a lucrative and noble profession, you can invest in other ideas to supplement your income. Some lawyers (including myself) have turned to income streams that are passive and that can earn money without requiring much effort.

For example, since completing law school, I realized I could not make the amount of money I wanted from legal practice alone. So I started a blog that offers freelance writing and copywriting services to clients around the world. Other fulltime lawyers like Kevin Ha, run a blog and have many side hustles under their belt that help them earn a passive income. Depending on what you like or are able to do, there is a passive income idea you can undertake and make more money on the side.

How can lawyers earn passive income? There are numerous passive income-earning opportunities for lawyers. So long as you are passionate or knowledgeable in something, you can turn it into a passive income source. Some easy streams you can earn passive income from include blogging, podcasting, creating niche sites, selling eBooks, affiliate marketing and many more.

In this post, we look at 6 Passive Income Streams for Lawyers that are easy to do, highly lucrative with time, and that do not interfere with your normal attorney duties. For more details about each idea, please hit the orange button below to view a comprehensive guide on every idea. The more passive income streams you have, the more income you make. Let’s get started.

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1. Blogging

As a lawyer, blogging can be an excellent way of earning a passive income. You can create a blog where you share legal ideas you are passionate or knowledgeable about, attract an audience, monetize it, and earn passive income without doing much in the long run. With quality content based on strategies that actually work (like Project 24), a monetized blog can help you earn over $1,000/month (source). For example, let’s say you are a transactional lawyer. You can share knowledge about the legal requirements of various transactions, attract a following, generate traffic, monetize your blog, and start earning a passive income. This can help you generate leads for your business (acquire clients) and demonstrate that you are an expert in your field.

Remember, building a successful blog is not easy. The hardest part about building a passive income blog is getting it to the monetization stage with enough traffic. You will need to provide high-quality content frequently, generate traffic and grow your audience, monetize your blog/content, and then you can start earning money from it. You can monetize your blog by placing ads and ad posts, affiliate marketing, lead generation, selling physical and digital products etc.

With the right strategies (like the ones offered in Income School’s Project 24), you can turn your blog into a passive income source that earns thousands of dollars every month. You can blog about many legal topics. With the knowledge gained from your first blog, you can create other blogs from existing niches in the legal field (or other), monetize them and earn more passive income. For more details about blogging as an ideal passive income stream for lawyers, please view our full guide.

Remember, building a successful blog is not easy. The hardest part about building a passive income blog is getting it to the monetization stage with enough traffic. You will need to provide high-quality content frequently, generate traffic and grow your audience, monetize your blog/content, and then you can start earning money from it. You can monetize your blog by placing ads and ad posts, affiliate marketing, lead generation, selling physical and digital products etc. 

With the right strategies (like the ones offered in Income School’s Project 24), you can turn your blog into a passive income source that earns thousands of dollars every month. You can blog about many legal topics. With the knowledge gained from your first blog, you can create other blogs from existing niches in the legal field (or other), monetize them and earn more passive income. For more details about blogging as an ideal passive income stream for lawyers, please view our full guide.

2. Podcasting

If writing is not your thing, you can share knowledge by recording audio files (podcasts) and posting them for your audience to listen to. With the right strategies and content, you can build a successful podcasting business that can help you rake over $6,000/month following the right methodologies. For example, if you are an intellectual property lawyer, you can record and post many podcasts about various topics on intellectual property. Once you start to generate traffic to your podcasts and grow your audience, you can monetize your content and earn a passive income from your podcasts.

Building a podcast business is not easy at first. The hardest part is getting your podcast to the monetization stage. To do so, the quality of your content is key because it helps you generate traffic and grow your audience. You need to create time off your busy schedule to record, edit and post content, promote your podcast, and monetize your content before you can start earning a passive income. However, a lot of that work can be outsourced for a very low cost on Fiverr for example, leaving you much more time to just record your content.

Some ways of monetizing your podcast include placing ads, affiliate marketing, selling products and more. You can also earn income through membership fees and donations. With the right content, monetization, and a few more strategies you can learn from Project 24 course on podcasting, you can earn excellent passive income. For more details about podcasting and how you can earn a passive income from it as a lawyer, feel free to view our full podcasting guide.

3. YouTube

If you prefer video content, YouTube is the way to go. Videos are compelling and credible sources of information and YouTube is currently the King source of video content. With the right content and strategies, you can monetize your YouTube channel and earn excellent passive income (source). Each video is an asset that you can monetize in a variety of ways, from affiliate marketing to lead generation. Not to mention that YouTube will help you provide yourself as a strong authority in your domain if you use it for that purpose.

For example, let’s say you are knowledgeable about immigration as a lawyer. You can start a YouTube channel, create and post video content about this niche, generate traffic to your site, advertise it, and grow your audience. With that, you can monetize your channel and start earning a passive income. Currently, you must have 1,000 subscribers and 4k hours of watch time within the last year for your channel to considered for monetization.

Building a successful channel is not easy. You have to provide high-quality content and grow your subscriber base. Getting your channel eligible for monetization is the hardest part. However, you can learn these and other tips of turning your channel into a passive income stream from the Project 24 course. Please check out our guide for more details about YouTube as a passive income stream. It’s a great resource, even for lawyers.

4. Creating Niche Sites

A niche site is a blog designed to serve or resonate with a specific audience and you can create one that attracts a specific audience (e.g. a particular group of lawyers or legal enthusiasts). Your audience shares common interests so your site should be a rich source of specific/detailed information. If you can grow your audience and hit 30k views on your page every month, you should be earning $1,000/month from your niche site according to Income School and following their monetization strategies. According to Project 24, a successful niche site can actually earn well over $7,000/month in 24 months following their methodology (source).

For instance, let’s say you are a real estate lawyer. Instead of blogging about the legal tenets in real estate, you can narrow down your niche to a specific area e.g. real estate laws in Quebec, Canada. That way, anyone who wants to learn about real estate law in Quebec will most likely end up on your site. So, a niche site helps you stand out from millions of other pages that people search online, which is beneficial when you want to generate traffic, grow your audience and generate leads for your local business.

Remember your audience visits your site to research information about a specific topic so it is important that you offer the best quality content, do enough research and simplify your content to make it easily understandable. With growing traffic to your site, and a sound audience, you can monetize your site (through ads, affiliate marketing, selling products, email marketing etc.) and start earning passive income. For more details about niche sites and how to build one that earns passive income, please view our full niche site guide.

5. Affiliate Marketing

You can earn a passive income by promoting and selling a legal product through an affiliate site. You earn income through commission on sales made through your link. With the right product and marketing strategies, you can earn great passive income every month or more as an affiliate marketer (source). For example, let’s say you have legal products (e.g. books, stationery, attire, etc) that you believe lawyers should have/own. You can sign up on an affiliate program (like Amazon Affiliates, Commission Junction (CJ), Affiliate.com, PeerFly etc.), promote to sell the products, and earn a commission on sales.

Although affiliate marketing sounds easy and lucrative, there’s a lot that goes into becoming a successful affiliate marketer. You have to identify a viable product, promote it well to your audience, and create content about it. As an affiliate marketer, your audience trusts on your views so it’s important for you to promote products you are passionate, knowledgeable about or use frequently. For more details about affiliate marketing as a viable passive income stream for lawyers, please view our full affiliate marketing guide.

6. Selling eBooks

As a lawyer, you can earn a decent income off selling eBooks. Creating and selling eBooks is both easy and passive. If you don’t have time to create your own eBook, you can outsource the services. So long as your content is compelling and you have an active audience that purchases it, you can actually earn a good passive income (source). All you need is to identify a niche topic, write content that is compelling to your audience, or the kind of content you would like to read, and you can earn passive income once your book starts to sell.

The best part? Selling eBooks is a highly passive means of making an income. You have the option of hiring the services of a ghostwriter to do the work (like writing, editing, publishing etc.) and you only wait to earn from it. Platforms like Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) allow you to write, upload and sell your words easily. You can also sell it on your own website through sites like Ecwid and make money in the process.

Although you need some financial investment to have your book written, edited, promoted etc., once it is completed and uploaded, your work is done and you can start to enjoy passive income. Check out this guide for more information about how you can make passive income from eBooks.

If you are looking for the services of a competent ghostwriter to write for your blog, to make an eBook or more, feel free to fill in the form below to get in touch with our team (DT Writers).

Related Questions

How much passive income can a lawyer make? It depends on the type of stream you are able and willing to do. Some passive income streams earn more money than others do so it’s important for you to choose a stream you can do easily. Better yet, you can combine two or more streams (e.g., you can run a monetized blog, YouTube channel and sell eBooks online) and earn more passive income in the process.

See More Passive Income Ideas

Can I earn passive income after retiring from legal practice? Yes. There are many ways that can help you earn passive income once you retire. Some online ideas like blogging, creating niche sites, running a monetized YouTube channel, etc. It all depends on what you are willing and able to do.

How long would it take before I start earning income passively? Every passive income stream offers unique periods before you can start earning passive income. Generally, the amount of time it takes before you break even depends on your individual effort, choice of niche and location of your business. You should make sure that you observe good management skills to prevent losing your money.